Ramiro de Maeztu | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Maeztu in 1934 | |
| Ambassador toArgentina | |
| In office February 1928 – February 1930 | |
| Member of theCortes | |
| In office 1933–1936 | |
| SeatL of theReal Academia Española | |
| In office 30 June 1935 – 29 October 1936 | |
| Preceded by | Cipriano Muñoz |
| Succeeded by | Eugenio Montes [es] |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Ramiro de Maeztu y Whitney (1875-05-04)4 May 1875 Vitoria,Kingdom of Spain |
| Died | 29 October 1936(1936-10-29) (aged 61) Madrid,Second Spanish Republic |
| Political party | Patriotic Union National Monarchist Union Spanish Renovation |
| Part ofa series on |
| Conservatism in Spain |
|---|
.svg) |
Literature
|
Parties Active Defunct |
Ramiro de Maeztu y Whitney (4 May 1875 – 29 October 1936) was a prolific Spanish essayist, journalist and publicist. His early literary work adscribes him to theGeneration of '98. Adept toNietzschean andSocial Darwinist ideas in his youth, he became close toFabian socialism and later todistributism andsocial corporatism during his spell as correspondent in London from where he chronicled theGreat War. During the years of thePrimo de Rivera dictatorship he served as Ambassador to Argentina. A staunchmilitarist, he became at the end of his ideological path one of the most prominentfar-right theorists against theSpanish Republic, leading the reactionary voices calling for amilitary coup. A member of the cultural groupAcción Española, he spread the concept of "Hispanidad" (Spanishness). Imprisoned by Republican authorities after the outbreak of theSpanish Civil War, he was killed by leftist militiamen during asaca in the midst of the conflict.
Ramiro de Maeztu y Whitney was born on 4 May 1875 inVitoria, the capital ofAlava province. He was the son of Manuel de Maeztu Rodriguez, aCuban engineer and landowner born inCienfuegos with ancestry fromNavarre. While in Paris, he had met his mother, Juana Whitney, born inNice and daughter of aBritish diplomat, when she was 16 years old.
He was among the young Spanish intellectuals deeply affected by their country's humiliating defeat in theSpanish–American War of 1898, along withJosé Martínez Ruiz ("Azorín"),Pío Baroja and others forming the literaryGeneration of '98.[1] His first collection of essays was published in 1898 under the nameHacia otra España ("Towards a Different Spain").
An early advocate ofsocialism,[2] he became disillusioned by theGreat War while he was serving as the London correspondent for several Spanish newspapers and travelled in France and Germany.
After returning to Spain, Maeztu rejected many of his friends and argued that human reason alone was not enough to solve social problems, and he argued for the importance of strong authority and tradition rooted in theRoman Catholic Church. Those ideas were embodied in his 1916 book,Authority, Liberty, and Function in the Light of the War, first published in English and later in Spanish asLa Crisis del Humanismo (1919).
Maeztu became one of the most prominent defenders of the regime ofMiguel Primo de Rivera and called for Spain to "recover its 16th-century sense of Roman Catholic mission".[3] In 1926, his literary essays were published inDon Quijote, Don Juan y La Celestina, and in 1928, he served as Spanish ambassador toArgentina.
In 1930, he joined theNational Monarchist Union, the successor party to Primo de Rivera'sPatriotic Union, along other defenders of the dictatorship such as the son of the dictatorJosé Antonio and the former ministersJosé Calvo Sotelo andEduardo Callejo de la Cuesta.[4]
Along withPedro Sainz Rodríguez and others, Maeztu founded themonarchist political movementAcción Española in 1931.[5] In 1934, his final published book was written,Defensa de la hispanidad ("In Defense of Spanishness"), which advocated "a return to pure Spanishness" and strongly condemnedliberalism and theFrench Revolution's slogan "liberty, equality, fraternity", which he countered by his own motto,duty, hierarchy, and humanity. He thought of Spanishness as a spiritual world that united Spain and its former colonies by the Spanish language and Catholicism, with rationalism and democracy being supposedly alien to the Hispanicethos.
Since 1932, he made it constant in several articles forAcción Española,La Nación and theABC newspaper, his admiration forAdolf Hitler, also showing himself to be a supporter of the anti-Semitism of theNazi Party. Also from the pages of ABC, he came to express his desire that a nationalist movement similar to Hitler's would triumph in Spain to confront democracy and Marxism, asking the extremistJosé María Albiñana to lead the project.[6]
_Ramiro_de_Maeztu.jpg)
On 29 October 1936 Maeztu wasexecuted by Republican soldiers in the early days of theSpanish Civil War nearMadrid.[7] These last words are attributed to him: "You do not know why you kill me, but I know why I'm dying: for your children to be better than you!"[8] His political thoughts had a profound influence on the Chilean historianJaime Eyzaguirre.[9]
His younger sister was the Spanish educator and feminist,María de Maeztu, who founded the Residencia de Señoritas and the Lyceum Club inMadrid, and his younger brother was the painter Gustavo de Maeztu, who has a museum named after him in the Palace of the Kings of Navarre inEstella,Spain.
The Spanish philosopherJosé Ortega y Gasset dedicated his bookMeditations on Quixote (1914) to Maeztu — "A Ramiro de Maeztu, con un gesto fraternal."[10]
Works in English translation
|
|
|
